Tantrum Dining

I promise I have been busy in the kitchen.  I made this wonderful sweet potato pancakes a couple of weekends ago.  My only problem is that you have to make the batter the night before and it is quite detailed.  You have to make the peach butter, then the candied nuts, and you have to bake a sweet potato.  All is too lengthy just for some pancakes, but you have to try it once.  They are pretty delicious.  I'm going to go ahead and hang on to the recipe as one of my favorites but I am going to make it without the candied nuts and special butter.  They are pretty tasty by themselves.  Also, it makes a lot of batter, so you can use it two days in a row.  And to be honest, it was kind of nice to get out of bed and just pull a bowl of pancake batter out of the fridge and just start frying pancakes!  Give it a try!



 Sweet Potato Pancakes with Peach Butter
by ezrapoundcake.com
http://www.ezrapoundcake.com/archives/15698

The recipe is way too long to put on here!


Another delicious thing I have made as of lately is a chocolate cheesecake.  This baby has three different layers of chocolate on top of Oreo cookie crust.  Then you top it off with a chocolate glaze.  It is delicious and rich.  It's taken us forever to eat it.  I'm not posting the recipe with a picture on here either because mine came out looking ugly.  Tasty, but ugly.  It's supposed to have three layers and a glossy glaze over the top.  I used a bigger pan, so my cheesecake was thin and didn't really show off the three different layers.  I recommend using the pan they tell you to (if you have it, if not do what I did, but don't expect to show it off).  Also, I recommend doubling the glaze recipe so you can make it pretty like their picture.

http://www.yumsugar.com/Chocolate-Cheesecake-Recipe-12944819

I really do enjoy cooking and baking.  I'm glad my dear sweet husband eats just about anything and enjoys that I like trying new things.  He'll tell me if something is a keeper or if we just ate a fun adventure never to be tried again.  :)  I wish I had the talent to come up with my own original recipes, but that is ok.  Some people can't even follow a recipe, so I'll still consider myself lucky.  And hungry.  :)

Speaking of hungry, I mentioned the other day that our dear sweet Emilie hasn't been cooperating at meal time.  Well, she's actually not cooperating much at all.  She's 19 months.  And for some reason, at about 18 months or so, each child is different, children start to test boundaries and have what they call tantrums.  I recall Aubrie going through the same thing.  There was one lunch time that I had her in timeout about 5 times.  She just wouldn't give up.  We stood our ground, she spent some time in timeout, and she learned that there are consequences and you can't get your way.  She'll still get one here or there, and when she does, it's still end-of-the-world-crying, but she's pretty familiar with consequences and it doesn't take much to snap her back to reality.

Emilie is a little different.  When you put her in timeout, she doesn't cry.  She just waits patiently for you to come get her.  She'll tell Aubrie "sowwy" if it was a hitting offense and she won't repeat the same offense.  She'll move on to a new one.  I've had her in timeout at a lot of public places lately.  It's not so bad because she doesn't cry.  I was horrified when I would have to timeout Aubrie in public.  She would cry as if someone were pinching her and people would just stare.  With Emilie, they do a double take and keep walking.  She just looks like a sweet child whose feet got tired so she peacefully sat down to rest.  She actually seems fascinated with it.  She'll come out of a timeout and go get one of her baby dolls and put THEM in timeout.  Then she'll bring the doll to us and say "baby timeout."  And we will ask, "was your baby in trouble?" and she'll smile and say "Yeah!" and go look for someone else to timeout. 

It's exhausting.  The biggest problem has been at the kitchen table.  Never at breakfast because the girl lives for breakfast.  It's lunch or dinner.  She used to be the best eater ever.  Now she decides she doesn't want something and she'll say, "don't want it!" and push her plate across the table.  We respond with, "That's fine, you don't have to eat it.  But you have to sit at the table until everyone is through."  Well, as you can guess, she can't sit until we are all done.  Because the ex-world's best eater is related to the current world's SLOWEST eater.  Aubrie will eat just about everything on her plate but it takes FOREVER!  (She likes to visit.)  Emilie loses her patience and will either,

A.  Scream the entire dinner
B.  Hang off the side of the chair, boneless (screaming)
C.  Or get put in timeout for screaming and putting her feet on the table

I've been giving her classics, too.  Chicken and Apple sausages with peas was an all time go-to meal for her.  Not this time.  She shoved that plate away from her and looked at me and said, "yoyurk???" (yogurt) 

She's gone without lunch one day and without dinner another day.  Hopefully this won't last long.  I can already see that she is getting a little better.  She's eaten what she wanted off her plate and shoved it away, but still sat at the table until Adam and I were done.  (We no longer make her wait for turtle eater).  Hopefully she'll come back around and be a good eater again.  It worked with Aubrie.  You can get her to try ANYTHING now.  I've taught her to try something and if she doesn't like it, quickly chase it with a drink of water.  She's pretty dramatic when she does it, but she tries everything.

I hope your meal times have been peaceful and full of rich conversations and hardy laughs.  :)
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